[Bards] Situations That Ruin Bardic Circles

[Cynthia Rogers]

I've been enjoying this discussion and wanted to throw in my random  
thoughts on the subject of Bardic circles (as distinct from  
competitions.)

I find that often a bardic circle is like trying to catch a  
butterfly. Sometimes it just lights on your shoulder when you aren't  
looking and it is a thing of beauty. Sometimes you have to try really  
hard and bring all the right equipment and go to the right location.  
Sometimes you try really hard and all you do is end up squashing the  
bug flat.

All that to say I think you have to be willing to risk the chance  
that you'll have to sit through some bad bardic, to give a circle the  
chance of becoming a good one. And sometimes I have to recognize that  
my performances would not help the circle become a good one, and I  
need to just listen, be an active audience and request pieces from  
the people who are performing that I think are in the spirit of the  
evening. (Occasionally, I'll end up in a circle that is in their cups  
and having a really good time singing filk and bawdy songs. If I  
interject something more serious, or try to tell a story, I'll be the  
bard that "brought the circle down."  Better if I just listen and  
acknowledge that the mood of the audience is for the kind of pieces  
that I don't really know.

Now, I'm one of the people who pre-plans and TRIES really hard to  
make it go well, but my experience is that the magic strikes when it  
strikes. I've been to fabulous circles that were very large (and I  
didn't perform at all), and small intimate ones where I knew everyone  
there and we worked through most of the pieces that we all knew.

Audience fatigue--  long pieces put a lot of strain on the audience.  
After all, the audience is not in an air-conditioned theater in a  
comfortable reclining seat in early evening, but rather at the end of  
a long and often miserably hot day. It is often late at night, they  
are tired and they have often been drinking. All these things lend  
themselves to our audiences having short attention spans.  Breaking  
up performances with sing-alongs, helps a lot, although it is a  
danger that the circle will become a pub-sing and the individual  
performances will be lost.

Pieces over 5 minutes I usually reserve for competitions only. And  
they are always stories. I think some of the questions I ask myself  
before I choose to learn a piece are:  Does the story have enough  
"shifts" in it to keep the audience awake?  Moments of humor, moments  
of emotion? Does it let me vary my voice? (Or is it more of a bedtime  
story that would lull a cranky child to sleep?) Are there places  
where I can address someone in the audience? Refer to something in  
the SCA that everyone knows? Get a bit of audience participation?   
But then like I said, I go into it with my butterfly nets and  
collection jars banging around on my backpack with my eyes glued to  
the binoculars looking for the rare Bardicus Butterfytus.

Best,
Rhiannon